had entered politics in the midst of a crisis in 1991, he had to worry not only about reducing the fiscal deficit and reviving economic growth, but also about stabilising the rupee and ensuring access to adequate foreign exchange as a result of the breakdown of the bio-polar world.

"Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, we took momentous decisions both with respect to our economic policies and with respect to our foreign policy. Prime Minister Rao launched what has come to be known as India's Look East Policy, linking India to the new growth engines of Asia.

"We liberalised our trade and investment rules to help us re-integrate with the global economy. In doing this, we were inspired by the experience of many East and South-East Asian countries," he said.

The Prime Minister said that since then the country has faced multiple challenges on the external front but it managed to protect its core economic and foreign policy interests.

"Whether it is dealing with sharp escalations in food and energy prices, or the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 and the Trans-Atlantic financial crisis in 2008-09, or the rise of China as a global mega-trader and changing power balances in the global and regional trading regimes, we have managed to protect India's core economic and foreign policy interests," Singh said.

He said after half-a-century of zero growth between 1900 and 1950, India saw annual growth rate rise to 3.5 per cent.

"When we realised that other developing countries were overtaking us and had found new routes to development, we too changed our course in the early nineties. In the past two decades, the rate of growth more than doubled to an average rate of over 7.0 per cent per annum and the Indian economy was put on an upward growth trajectory," Singh said.